From 2019 to 2023, Real Estate spent millions of dollars on lobbying in Albany. This data analysis digs into the organizations who spent money in Albany over the period, who they paid, and where there money went.

It analyzes data from from the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government via NY Open Data

Organizations Investigated

The analysis focuses on the following Real Estate organizations which are some of the top spending lobbying clients in the state.

There are three different types of data available from the state lobbying records.

  1. Compensation for lobbyists
  2. Expenses and spending by lobbyists
  3. Lobbying activities and targets

1. Compensation

Compensation data tells us how much a client paid a lobbyist during a given period. By checking the amount that real estate clients paid their lobbyists every bi-monthly period, we can get an idea of how much they are spending on lobbying.

Total Compensation spending by all parties since 2019

The biggest spender was the Real Estate Board of New York, who spent over 3 million on lobbying in the past five years. Homeowners for an affordable New York, formed in 2022, spent even more per year - averaging over a million dollars in lobbying compensation a year between 2022 and 2023.

Lobbying compensation over time by organization

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Sometimes real estate registered as their own lobbyist. But more often, they used a lobbying company. Fontas advisors and Greenberg Traurig were paid the most by real estate in the past five years.

Top Lobbying groups by Amount Compensated

2. Expenses

Lobbying groups also spent millions on on particular lobbying expenses on behalf of clients, like advertising and advocacy.

Real Estate clients spent $5 million over five years

Total itemized expenses by year

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The majority of those expenses were advertising. They also spent money on consultants and advocacy - which could be work on legislative tracking, grassroots advocacy, or phone banking

Types of expenses and their frequency

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3. Targets of Lobbying

Lobbying data also tells us how often lobbyists reached out to particular legislators on behalf of a client, and what issues they lobbied them about.

Unsurprisingly, real estate lobbied mostly about real estate, housing, and construction, but also played a big role in budget and tax negotiations.

Most targeted Issues

Lobbyists working for real estate lobbied about good cause eviction the most, more than any other piece of legislation in the past five years.

Most Targeted Laws

Real Estate targeted specific legislators frequently, many of them NYC legislators.

Most targeted people

But their influence also extended to the highest halls of power, frequently lobbying the executive chamber in the governor’s office, and minority and majority program staff and representatives in the legislature.

Most targeted bodies

Download all the data

Download the cleaned and filtered data for the investigated organizations here.

Compensation

Expenses

Lobbying contacts